Eric_Blob

This isn't un-expected. 5 Seconds Of Summer have a larger fan-base than Calvin Harris, and Calvin Harris has broader appeal than 5 Seconds Of Summer. If The Vamps and David Guetta both released on air, on sale tracks on the same week the same thing will happen, it doesn't necessarily mean that one artist/song is better than the other. I've not heard either of their new songs, but I'm assuming here that neither artist has deviated very much from their standard music. :lol: Although I honestly would've expected 5SOS to be higher than #23 atm too... Calvin is doing around as well as I would've expected for him so far.

I like the songs personally. Hopefully Macarena is next to get this treatment. :lol: Also, Rihanna and AlunaGeorge have done songs recently sampling those songs too!

The correlation between radio airplay (specifically Capital FM, and also largely Radio 1 and Heart FM) and iTunes is un-deniable imo. But the problem is, what other form of promotion can even compete with radio airplay? A very, very important thing about radio airplay being such effective promotion is that it ensures people hear the same song repeatedly. As I'm sure a lot of you have experienced, sometimes the first time you hear the song it doesn't sound that good, or it might sound a bit strange, but after a dozen listens you really get into it and love it. Radio is perfect for this, since it ensures a large number of people hear a song multiple times (a song that they may not have given a 2nd chance to if it were up to them). A music video is brilliant promotion, but a lot of people watch them once, and if the song doesn't catch their attention on first listen, they might not give it another chance. Same with an X Factor performance to 10 million people, brilliant promotion also, but the audience are only going to hear the song once, if it doesn't catch on then they probably won't ever seek the song out to listen to again. However, with radio, you heard the song and didn't care much for it? Doesn't matter, we'll play it again, and again, and again until you end up liking it! :lol: I think that's one important thing that makes it such an effective promotion tool, I don't think any other form of promotion can compete. Perhaps MTV airplay, since that's similar to radio and even has visuals to go with it, but I don't think music TV channels have as widespread a use as radio does. When I first started following the charts it took me a while to figure out the correlation between radio and iTunes. The thing that always threw me off was the fact that so many people just never listen to the radio. But the truth is, all big hits are viral. If you can introduce a song to 10% of the current music-listening population via radio, and it's a really stand-out song, then the 10% will eventually let the other 90% of the population know about it (through social media, parties, word of mouth, or whatever else). It might take many, many months for a song to spread through the majority of the music listening population (see: Uptown Funk!, Thinking Out Loud, etc.), but it happens eventually.

Wet Dollars and Julio Bashmore! :o

Looking at these figures it seems See You Again got #1 due to lack of competition. It's rare that being 2, 3 and 7 on the component charts can get you #1 overall surely. If I remember correctly, last year Rude by MAGIC! got #1 by being something like 2, 6 and 7 on the component charts, which was even worse (that song hadn't been at #1 THAT long though so it probably wasn't as annoying :lol:).

Funnily enough Capital XTRA have been playing One Man Can Change The World basically since album release.

This must be the first time that Disclosure have held back a single? I think even the F For You remix got put on iTunes straight away.

I could see Adele's next album selling around 500,000 - 1,500,000 in total. Which would be fantastic sales for a normal album in 2015, but given 21's success I think people would see it as an underperformance,

His single Planes has ended up doing better, even though Tonight Belongs To U! was supposed to be the mainstream single lol. Jeremih has another dance-pop song out with Nicki Minaj soon, but I also think that won't do much. Peanut Butter Jelly is a good song, but if it being a hit means Gallants are just going to release more terrible songs like U & I in the future then I hope it's not one.

The Iggy Azalea version is getting released on Friday I believe. But I think it's going to miss the top 200 if the original is only this high atm.

I was going to say DZ might get a boost on the weekend, but then I realised Friday and Saturday aren't included in this chart week. His label might not have thought that through. :lol:

Are Heart FM and Radio 2 playing the raps in See You Again or have they made no-rap edits? :o

This pretty much. It's always happened, and hopefully always will. I know sometimes the re-makes/remixes are poor if they sound too similar to the original, or if they take a good song and make it into something generic, but in a lot (maybe most) cases they do something creative and make it into something different.

Probably, but I would imagine Radio 2 plays album tracks quite a lot? Even Heart FM does sometimes! Although, I see it's been released in other countries, so it probably is one. Probably will have a similar effect to Pour It Up's music video.

Are you sure that's the reason? I've recently started having to listen to Capital again and they play Worth It a lot, which is also out the same week. Also, Capital have been known to randomly not play certain singles at all, even ones by major artists, so this could just be another case of that, but they might play it after release.

Bad Blood or Cheerleader need to get (back) to #1 next week. 11 weeks is just too much.

Beautiful is my favourite out of those! Great for this weather too. Pharrell has produced and/or sang on 29 songs so far in 2015 by my count, and it's only July. :lol:

Technically the last year Pharrell had no music out was 1991! :o

Are you sure you're not getting mixed up with the Big Top 40 Show? :lol: That used to only count iTunes. The official chart definitely counts other download sites. We've had cases where songs were not available on iTunes but were available on other sites, and they get a dozen sales or so. We've also had cases where a song hasn't been very high on iTunes but physical sales have propped it up. I think it's just that iTunes has a HUGE share of the overall market, so most of the time the chart looks similar to the iTunes chart (that's why we mainly follow the iTunes chart on this forum and don't bother with the other smaller ones). I disagree with this. New releases make barely any difference to the overall sales figures each week. I remember late 2013 when sales suddenly started declining a lot of people said stuff like "It's just because there's not big songs out atm", but that's not the case. Last week the sales were 2,516,244 compared to 2,851,548 last year. And that was with two songs selling around 100,000 last week. We could've had FIVE new releases selling around 100,000 and we still would not have matched 2014's sales. It's got very little to do with new releases, the sales of the songs outside the top 40 are much more important for overall sales than the new releases. Sales just really are falling, mainly due to people switching to streaming. You'd need an X Factor single that sells hundreds of thousands released every week of the year to compete with 2014's sales. It's not just down to a lack of new releases. Also, remember a lot of weeks last year they didn't have big new releases either, yet 2014's sales have been higher than 2015's sales, every single time.

Perhaps. We'll have to wait and see. I could see Apple Music having anything from a huge impact to just a small initial impact that increases over time. Streaming will definitely be at 70% at the very least by the end of the year (even without Apple). So I agree that it could be 80% by the end of the year if the Apple streaming site ends up having a big impact. I don't think sales will be 2004 levels as soon as next year though. I think we're probably at around 2008 levels atm, since I remember one of the recent #1s had the lowest sales since Closer by Ne-Yo. So maybe next year we'll be at 2006-2007 levels of sales.

One thing to note is in the physical age songs would usually sell what they did in their main chart run and little else (from what I'm told anyway), so songs released later in the year weren't at a significant disadvantage (unless they were released in December really). However, in the download age with trickle sales songs from the beginning of the year had an advantage since the biggest hits could maybe get around 100,000 or even more extra sales in the last half of the year, whilst the songs that were big during the last half of the year didn't have that. In the streaming age this is even more the case, since trickle streams seem to be comparatively even higher than trickle sales were (it's logical, since people will continue listening to a song they love for years, whilst you can only download a song once (not accounting for alternate versions/remixes or obsessive fans who multi-buy, etc.). So going by that, I think the current YTD top 6 will be guaranteed to be in the year-end top 10. I've not heard Hold Back The River, but I assume it's the sort of song that will have longevity. I don't think FourFiveSeconds and below will though. It'd honestly be a bit weird to me if FourFiveSeconds does better year-end than Diamonds did (even if FFS was released near the beginning of the year and Diamonds near the end). On the other hand, I can't really think of 4 up-coming songs that are going to be huge enough to sell 700,000+ in 6 months. I'm sure there'll be something, but usually you have a good idea of what they might be a while in advance, and I can't think of anything. I don't think House Every Weekend of the new Little Mix single would do THAT well. I'm probably forgetting something obvious! :lol:

I'm torn between House Every Weekend and Worth It. House Every Weekend is easily the more iconic song (regardless of where/if it charts), but I want Kid "what you acting shy for" Ink to get a #1 and Worth It is very catchy. Also, the idea of house every weekend makes me feel sick tbh.

The first half of the year can often be very quiet (particularly around February-April in some years). But also, the chart has slowed down. A long-running #15 hit from today is like a long-running #8 hit from a few years ago, or a front-loaded #11 hit today is like a front-loaded #5 hit from a few years ago. Basically, I think people need to lower their standards for what a "big chart hit" is, if you keep the same standards as in the download era it's just going to seem like there aren't many big songs anymore. Personally in real life I haven't noticed much difference. I generally hear a lot of both old and current (probably leaning more towards old songs), but that's been the case for as long as I can remember tbh. Also, Uptown Funk was so successful that maybe it counts as like 5 massive hits to the general public. :lol:

I've had cases like that the past few years too! But this week in particular I know 4 of the 5 (all except Shut Up And Dance).

With Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey that was put in the rock chart for the first few weeks, then got changed to the dance/electronic chart. So it's possible they might change it. It does look messy when they have an old song "debuting" really high up the chart randomly though. Another example is Stay by Rihanna which was put in the R&B chart at first (on album release week) but then got taken off later when it was a single (which I found strange, as John Legend and Alicia Keys piano ballads get to chart there). Also, surely Believe by Cher is the biggest dance song? It was year-end #1, I'm not sure if it happened any other time. In recent years the biggest is probably Party Rock Anthem.